There is known a motor core which is manufactured as a laminated body by laminating several tens to several hundreds of a ring-shaped thin plate member obtained by pressing an electromagnetic steel sheet. The thickness of the thin plate member is about 0.15 to 0.5 mm. It is considered that the thinner the thickness is, the better the energy efficiency is. Further, it is also known that the ring-shaped thin plate member is configured by a plurality of arc-shaped thin plate members, in order to effectively use the material of the motor core.
For example, Patent Document 1 discloses an apparatus for manufacturing a laminated iron core by configuring one ring-shaped thin plate member with a plurality of fan-shaped segments, laminating a plurality of the thin plate members and coupling the thin plate members to each other. A central angle of the fan-shaped segment is 360°/n and one ring-shaped thin plate member is configured by “n” segments. The ring-shaped thin plate members of each layer adjacent to each other are laminated in an offset manner so that each arc-shaped segment configuring each thin plate member is stacked to be shifted from each other like a brick-laying.
In this apparatus, the segment is punched into a master die by a press machine. When “n” described above is 3, the punched segment is rotated by 120° in a circumferential direction by rotation of the master die. And then, the next segment is punched out. The punched segment is coupled to another segment adjacent thereto. In this way, one ring-shaped thin plate member is configured by three segments. Then, the master die is rotated by 60° and then a ring-shaped thin plate member of the next layer is laminated on the thin plate member in a similar manner.
According to this, the punching of the segment and the laminating of the thin plate member are carried out by a mechanism for rotating the master die. Accordingly, it is possible to configure the manufacturing apparatus of the laminated iron core in a compact manner.
However, according to Patent Document 1, the master die is caused to rotate each time when the segment is punched out. Accordingly, there is a problem that it takes some time to perform rotating and positioning of the master die and thus it is difficult to improve the production rate.
Moreover, according to Patent Document 1, the segment is cut off from the thin plate material and put into the master die by a cutting in a final process and the master die is caused to rotate by a predetermined angle each time when the cutting is performed. Accordingly, it is required to simultaneously control the feeding pitch of the thin plate material and the positioning of rotation position of the master die with high precision. For this reason, the positioning control of the thin plate material and the master die becomes complicated and thus apparatus cost is increased.
Further, Patent Document 2 has suggested a laminated body manufacturing apparatus for a rotor core, in which the laminating time of the segments becomes shorter and the segments are laminated with high precision. According to the laminated body manufacturing apparatus for the rotor core, it is possible to more rapidly and effectively laminate the segments with high precision when forming the rotor core by laminating a plurality of segments in a ring-shaped arrangement.
In this laminated body manufacturing apparatus, scrap members are generated when cutting and extracting a plurality of segments. The laminated body manufacturing apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 2 is configured so that the generated scrap members in a state of being connected are discharged to the outside of the laminated body manufacturing apparatus and then cut off to a predetermined size.
However, in the case of a stator core using a sheet material whose plate thickness is thin, there is a problem that the scrap members are easily flexed while the scrap members cut off from the plate by a press device are discharged to the outside of the laminated body manufacturing apparatus and thus it is difficult to discharge the scrap members from the laminating body manufacturing apparatus.